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Show HN: Collections, a fast multiple-account Google Docs client for Mac
- clutteredname_ 14y agoLooks like this app is getting lots of traffic. FATAL errors abound. Looking forward to this. Anyone know a reason it can't support offline editing?
- btipling 14y agoSuper nice, but I worry about the slower webkit in webview. If it is much slower, you would get a better experience in the browser, despite the nice UI additions in this app.
- modeless 14y agoWhy would an embedded web view be slower than Safari on a Mac? Mac OS doesn't have the restrictions on generated code that iOS does.
- chime 14y agoPlus he could always embed WebKit or Chromium.
- jarek-foksa 14y agoThis is the case at least with apps from Mac App Store. Safari uses WebKit2 which is a private framework. If you want to ship your app on Mac App Store you have to use WebKit1 which does not support split-process model. Flags that enable GPU accelerated compositing are also private on Lion.
- kposehn 14y agoI think this is brilliant. There may be concerns about speed, but I think that for now the convenience and features should overcome that.
- barclay 14y agoHmm. Dunno if it was syncing, or what, but it just sat there consuming CPU (170% across both cores) for a while. Finally killed it.
- ernestipark 14y agoThis is fantastic and solves a huge pain point. Google docs is a crutch for most people, but the interface and accessing it is generally terrible. The onboarding was simple. This is a good start, I'm looking forward to what you guys do next. As for feature requests, I'd like to see collapsible sidebars, the real estate on the editing is a bit small. Good luck guys!
- Spittie 14y agoI know that this isn't really related to the application, but anyway... Please, don't let the browser scale the images for you. I don't like opening a site, and seeing something like this (http://sadpanda.us/images/1078451-DUYING8.png http://sadpanda.us/images/1078451-DUYING8.png). Beside that, this client seems something really awesome, especially the ability to easily edit docs from different accounts.
- natrius 14y agoWhat browser are you using? I thought modern browsers did a better job of scaling. Chrome does, at least.
- Spittie 14y agoFirefox. Yes, it's a know problem and there is already a patch, but as always is taking forever to get approved. And yes, Chrome do a better job, but still it doesn't look totally right.
- Danieru 14y agoFirefox uses a faster(worse) scaling algorithm than Chrome. Besides, it consumes extra bandwidth for 97% of users.
- _mayo 14y agoThis is awesome. Are there any plans to port this to other platforms?
- jordanlee 14y agoThanks! There certainly are, but not for a little while. Which would you prefer we support first?
- _mayo 14y agoPersonally, I would love a native Linux version. Especially since there's no official Google Drive client currently available for Linux.
- chad_oliver 14y agoI second that.
- aroman 14y agoThirded.
- droelf 14y agoYou might want to try out GWOffice. Does nearly the same, I guess.
- sahaj 14y agoWindows, obviously.
- i_cannot_hack 14y agoGreat! All I felt was lacking were some options on how to sort the documents in the sidebar.
- tonyx 14y agoRight click in the list of documents and you'll see the option to sort by title, date created and date last modified. Let me know if this is helpful.
- pk 14y agoAn icon to access the sort menu would make the interface a little easier to use. Context meus are nice, but they should be a shortcut to an action rather than the only way to trigger it. I also noticed that the search box only searches document titles. It would be nice to have it filter document titles as you type, and then perform a full-text search when the user hits enter (like Google's online Drive search). Awesome app, keep up the good work!
- i_cannot_hack 14y agoAh. Yes, that was precisely what I was looking for. It wasn't very obvious though, so you might want to add some more visual ways to make the user aware that the option exists.
- JoelMcCracken 14y agoA desktop client for a web app that replaced a desktop client. Amazing!
- mratzloff 14y agoHe should use this exact phrase on the website. Sarcastic marketing FTW.
- jordanlee 14y agoI won't pretend I'm not tempted.
- kirillzubovsky 14y agodo it!
- ddt 14y agoReminds me very much of javelin.js's tone. If Facebook engineers can do it, why can't you? https://github.com/facebook/javelin/ https://github.com/facebook/javelin/
- JoelMcCracken 14y agoA few years from now, you'll be bought by microsoft to replace Office.
- joeblau 14y agoSoftception!
- ddt 14y agoI love it. I have three different Google accounts I use for docs and being able to not have to open up a new tab just to see the other docs is worth the download. The only thing I'd want is a little bit less agnosticism about which docs belong to which accounts.
- mross462 14y agoCouldn't get past clicking next.
- mratzloff 14y agoApplication Error An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.
- josiahq 14y agoFATAL: too many connections for role "ruwdncbzdkulsh"
- bherms 14y agoYep, same here... Appears that the app is getting limited on it's connections to google.
- matthewphiong 14y agoDjango DEBUG = True
- alpb 14y agoYes I get the Heroku error page too. I believe this can be crowdfunded very well.
- pk 14y agoThis is a great example of a Minimum Viable Product. It has just enough features to be useful (multiple accounts, search, editing) and no more. From the website, they have plans to iterate quickly, with the help of what I'm sure will be a lot of feedback from the initial release. This kind of discipline in feature selection is admirable, and something we should all strive for in app development. My only critique is that in the new user dialog, the app showed a screenshot of adding an account _before_ the screen where you could actually add an account. I found this a little confusing (why can't I click to add my account now?). I wouldn't mind seeing that screenshot after adding my first account to let me know how to add another.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- annatonger 14y agonice!!
- franzus 14y agoWhy is it free? Take money for it.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoIt's still beta. I guess he would charge for it when it reaches 1.0 (and he should).
- mcrider 14y agoProbably not a good idea for a beta release...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bdittmer 14y agoKind of confused by this heroku error message I received? Are you storing my gmail credentials on heroku? When I tried again I have a google /looking/ login screen? http://cl.ly/1p0M0o2t0H1E3Z1h3i0n http://cl.ly/1p0M0o2t0H1E3Z1h3i0n
- nestlequ1k 14y agoI think they are mimicking the Google Login page and just saving your username/password. Seems damn fishy to me.
- mukaiji 14y agono. these guys are legit. they work in our sandhill office. They're not out to steal your login credentials.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoIf they're legit, why are they not using oAuth?
- tonyx 14y agoWe are using Google's oauth2 protocol. No user password is stored or even ever transmitted to our server.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWell I'm not at a Mac so I can't confirm but it's unfortunate to see such misinformation in this thread. I apologize for repeating it, I was too trusting of other comments.
- nestlequ1k 14y agoSince you are framing in the login with webkit, why not show the URL as well? User's need to see htts://google.com or they'll assume it's a phishing attack.
- forgetcolor 14y agoignore if you're still using snow leopard. requires 10.7. (boo)
- thomas-st 14y agopsql -h ec2-107-22-171-68.compute-1.amazonaws.com -p 5732 -U u1npugarlguimh -d ddbs2kvmqeieon Since DEBUG=True, finding the password is left as a trivial exercise for the reader. I wouldn't trust the service until they fix the issue.
- thomas-st 14y agoRevoke application access here: https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens?hl=en https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens?hl=en
- philfreo 14y agoDur.... everybody should revoke their OAuth tokens immediately if you've used this app
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tonyx 14y agoHi thomas-st, thanks a lot for bring this up. we just fixed the issue and changed credentials on the server as well. All transmission also happen securely through HTTPS and contents are only stored on Google's server, not ours.
- anemitz 14y agoSince you store the Google auth_token couldn't anyone with access to the database also gain access to sessions?
- tonyx 14y agoWe've turned off debug mode and reset our database credentials. We are looking through the database server access log right now and going to make sure that 1) all connections were made from our own servers and 2) users in the timeframe affected will be notified of the issue and guided to resolve it as soon as possible
- xb95 14y agoHi -- I suggest you not use this app right now. It is currently throwing up debug pages that include information that allows someone to connect to Postgres and dump the database containing information about your documents. App developers -- please update your Heroku settings and/or turn this off immediately. You are exposing confidential company information to the wild. Thanks.
- tonyx 14y agoHi xb95, thanks for alerting us to the issue we've turned off debug mode and reset our database credentials. We are looking through the database server access log right now and going to make sure that 1) all connections were made from our own servers and 2) users in the timeframe affected will be notified of the issue access token revoked immediately.
- kuhn 14y agoGreat idea, just wish it wasn't crashing on me. Also the security issues which the others have are a bit of a worry.
- kuhn 14y agoI should add the error I'm getting is: "An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details." This happens when I clicking allow on the oauth permission screen.
- xwowsersx 14y agoAn error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.
- ianstormtaylor 14y agoThis is awesome. Navigating Google Docs is the worst. But PLEASE do away with the preview mode. I don't want to have to click edit all the time, and I don't really lose anything by just always having the web view. That and get a nicer app icon :p (seriously)
- ianstormtaylor 14y agoAt least for spreadsheets get rid of it. I could see it being nice to remove all the junk chrome that Google puts around docs though. But if I'm viewing a spreadsheet, not being able to add to cells is useless.
- tonyx 14y agoTry double clicking on either the preview or the list of documents. That will get you into the edit mode right away without having to click on the edit button
- ianstormtaylor 14y agoawesome thanks! also, if anyone wants a nicer icon i made @mattrossi's dribble shot (http://dribbble.com/shots/530208-Google-Drive-FREE-PSD?list=47622-Google-Icons http://dribbble.com/shots/530208-Google-Drive-FREE-PSD?list=...) into an .icns file you can easily replace: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8875810/google-drive-icon.icns http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8875810/google-drive-icon.icns
- swaraj 14y agocouldn't install: http://screencast.com/t/L9SQeTqQT http://screencast.com/t/L9SQeTqQT
- Groxx 14y agoThey use Google Docs for the bug/feature submission pages. For some reason, that tickles my funny bone.
- Wump 14y agoOffline editing would be a killer feature.
- filip01 14y agoThe quotes might seem like a good idea but they're actually just obtrusive.
- adv0r 14y agoGood work guys, i tried it but...I don't really understand why do we need a desktop client. With google drive all the documents/colelction are available offline and accessible with one click from spotlight "cmd+space -> name of the document - et voilà"
- septerr 14y agoAwesome! Now I don't have to switch accounts! Sparrow for Google Docs. Now make an app for iphone! It's annoying to open webpage to access google docs on iphone :/
- septerr 14y agoOh and Thank You!
- philmcc 14y agoOne of my favorite things about this is its presentation. You've placed your app in something that people lust after (a macbookair) and then something 'cool' inside of that (x-men). Probably more compelling than a screen shot of a spreadsheet or a table, I bet it triggered an "I WANT THIS" reflex that I wasn't consciously aware of.
- rgbrgb 14y agoLast semester I did a big group project using Google Docs but we kept running into an issue where the spacing was different on everyone's computers. The title page would look perfect on one computer and overflow to the next page on another. This was in Chrome on OS X and Ubuntu. It really made me pine for native apps.
- dantheman0207 14y agoI recently did a small group project in which we shared a .doc on dropbox between users on Windows and Ubuntu. We had the same issue, as well as disappearing page numbers and other spooky trivia. Multi-user document editing is hand-wavy art at best.
- robinjondavid 14y agolove it!
- emmelaich 14y agoCurious, why did you use a bit.ly url for the app? Shortened urlsm have their places, but I'm a little leery of them,. (http://bit.ly/MlUfJm http://bit.ly/MlUfJm)
- bherms 14y agoOne small criticism... Calling your app "Collections" leads to some ominous looking emails when you contact customers: "This is Mike from Collections" makes me immediately feel like I've forgotten to pay a bill.